Page 7 of Sunsplitter
“Andgetting fucking paid, obviously,” Fi added. “Antal has kept every promise. I’ve made sure of it.”
Another long pause. Clarence made a deliberate show of reading the letter again.
“What’s the job?” he said at last.
With that, Fi had him.
“We’re upgrading all our cities with more efficient energy conduits. We need conductive metal—the best you can get. Bring it to Thomaskweld, and you get paid.” She dug out a second page from her jacket, an invoice for various metal grades.
Clarence’s brows shot up when he read the rates. Fair prices, no more daeyari suppression of materials or technology.
Fi let him hum over the paperwork, let him pretend he was playing hard to get. That was the trick, letting people think they had the upper hand. Being laorsek was a contest of confidence, more than anything.
At last, Clarence stowed the paperwork into a pocket of his coat.
They stepped outside together. Fi shook his hand.
“I look forward to doing business with you,” she said, syrupy sweet.
“Invite me to coffee next time, you ass. What am I supposed to think, the daeyari’s Arbiter sneaking up on me in my hotel room?”
“Nothis Arbiter,” she reiterated.
“The fuck am I supposed to call you, then?”
Truly, Fi didn’t know. Their world had a name for humans who served as the hand of their immortal lords—Arbiter. They had words for humans willing to fall into daeyari beds—foolish, playthings, casualties.
There was, as far as Fi knew, no name for whatever she was, partner instead of prey.
“Fi is fine,” she said. “The same as always.”
With their business concluded, Clarence disappeared into the terminal. Fi let him go with a smug smile, fists braced on her hips after an excellent negotiation. He hadn’t even genuinely tried to stab her. That separated him from a solid half of the smugglers she’d talked to. Granted, most of those had owed her an attempted stabbing.
She retraced her route out of the transit terminal, past the bright lights and wide windows of the waterfront shops, back to the quay overlooking the harbor. She found Aisinay lying on the concrete, fluked tail curled around folded hooves. The fins at her tail-tip and down her neck were fanned open to the sun. Feathers littered the ground. At least one seabird had wandered too close.
At Fi’s approach, the blind horse huffed. Whatever Fi’s energy smelled like, it earned her a welcoming snort.
“Oh, sure,nowyou get out of the water?”
Another snort, curter.
“No, you’re right. You wouldn’t have been much help in the transit terminal.” Obnoxious know-it-all. “Ready to go home?”
Aisinay stood with a clack of hooves. Fortunately, the sun had dried her scales. Fi mounted the horse’s bare back then settled a hand on her neck. No sight, but Aisinay sensed the gentle energy current Fi Shaped at her fingertips, steering her forward.
The Curtains in the transit terminal, Fi avoided. She preferred quieter routes, lesser-known Curtains outside the city, the coveted navigation routes she’d mapped out as a smuggler.
She guided Aisinay away from the waterfront. Shopfronts shifted into apartments. Apartments shifted into homes on wider lots, the city fringes splintering into inland peat bogs.
The outskirts of Calvariz were busier than Fi had ever seen, carts clogging the frozen mud road, new houses being built. Antal Territory had long been a haven for those seeking a more lenient daeyari, fewer sacrifices, and free reign to his elected governor. Now that he’d stopped eating live prey altogether, word was spreading, more humans moving in every day.
Fi had made this happen. When Antal’s daeyari neighbor, Verne, had staged a coup to seize this land, Fi had helped him kill the tyrant and reclaim his territory. She’d pushed Antal to make real change. It was strange, seeing her actions have such wide-reaching consequences.
She didn’t feel like a sellout. Shedidfeel like the world was larger than it used to be.
And maybe that was a little terrifying. A year of progress, but always more to do.
Fi was nearly to her Curtain when she smelled smoke. Odd, with snow crusting the bogs.
